{"id":17247,"date":"2023-11-15T18:24:50","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T10:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/orbite-begins-the-launch-countdown-for-its-commercial-astronaut-training-programs\/"},"modified":"2023-11-15T18:24:50","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T10:24:50","slug":"orbite-begins-the-launch-countdown-for-its-commercial-astronaut-training-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/orbite-begins-the-launch-countdown-for-its-commercial-astronaut-training-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"Orbite begins the launch countdown for its commercial astronaut training programs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Orbite
Participants in an astronaut orientation session float during a zero-G flight in France in 2021. (Orbite Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After getting its start in Seattle and testing its business model in France and Florida, a space travel venture called Orbite is ready to start signing up customers for private-sector astronaut training programs.<\/p>\n

And although it\u2019ll be a while before those programs begin in earnest, Orbite CEO Jason Andrews says the first 500 people to make a refundable deposit will be in for some astronaut-worthy experiences between now and then.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are announcing today is just the beginning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Orbite plans to invite early-stage customers in its Founders Club to attend a series of space-adjacent events, starting with a rocket-launch watch party in Florida next spring and continuing with gatherings that could include an underwater adventure in the Florida Keys and a trip to Antarctica.<\/p>\n

Andrews said Founders Club members could spend part of their $5,000 pre-booking deposit on one of those tours, or put all the money toward a training program at Orbite\u2019s Astronaut Training and Spaceflight Gateway Campus in Florida.<\/p>\n

That training facility, mapped out by French industrial designer Phillippe Starck, is due to be built at a site that\u2019s yet to be disclosed in the area around Florida\u2019s Space Coast and Orlando. Protracted business negotiations led to delays in the development schedule, but the facility is currently set to open in 2026, Andrews said.<\/p>\n

\"\"
An artist\u2019s rendering shows Philippe Starck\u2019s design for Orbite\u2019s Astronaut Training and Spaceflight Gateway Campus in Florida. (Orbite Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Orbite (pronounced \u201cor-beet,\u201d in the French way) was founded in 2019 by Andrews, the former CEO of Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries; and Nicolas Gaume, a French-born tech entrepreneur who also works at Microsoft. <\/p>\n

The privately held company\u2019s mission is to familiarize would-be spacefliers with the space marketplace \u2014 and to let them sample final-frontier experiences on Earth.<\/p>\n

Orbite offered a series of three-day orientation sessions in 2021 to test out its concept, which blended zero-G and high-G airplane flights with classroom sessions and extracurricular activities such as stargazing and space-food tasting sessions. <\/p>\n

With the aid of virtual-reality simulations, participants learned about the suborbital flights offered by Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture, as well as the orbital flights facilitated by Axiom Space and SpaceX. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou get to try a Blue flight and a Virgin flight, and you also get to try a Dragon flight and a Starship flight,\u201d Andrews said. \u201cWe\u2019re working with the other providers today to integrate the stratospheric balloons and the on-orbit platforms, so that you walk out of day one very much more advanced than when you walked in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Orbite
Orbite teammates and session participants celebrate during orientation. (Orbite Photo \/ Magali Maricot)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The lessons learned during past sessions are helping Orbite fine-tune its plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are working to design our curriculum and facilities to support the missions of tomorrow, which will include professional astronauts, mission specialists and career astronauts working in low Earth orbit, on the moon and potentially Mars,\u201d Brienna Rommes, Orbite\u2019s director of astronaut training, said in a news release.<\/p>\n

Andrews told GeekWire that different levels of the curriculum will target different sectors of the spaceflight market.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about this as a college campus, but a college campus for space, where you come in and do your 100-level courses to explore different topics,\u201d he said. \u201cYou do your 200-level courses that start to get into the details. We think of that as the suborbital training curriculum. You do your 300-level courses, which is your orbital training curriculum. And then you can have your advanced courses \u2026 whether you\u2019re going to space for enjoyment or you\u2019re going there for your profession.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orbite\u2019s four-night orientation course \u2014 the 100-level course \u2014 is priced at $29,500. Prices for the five-night suborbital training program start at $49,500 per person. <\/p>\n

Orbite is also working out the details for orbital training programs \u2014 the 300-level courses. \u201cThe orbital flight training is more custom, depending on the mission (e.g., three days vs. one week or one month),\u201d Andrews explained in an email. \u201cAs a result, there is not a fixed price, but it starts around $400,000 and can go up depending on the mission. It is still a small portion of the overall ticket price.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrews said Orbite is planning to facilitate commercial space tours using a strategy that\u2019s similar to how Spaceflight Industries\u2019 subsidiary, Spaceflight Inc., facilitated satellite launches on other companies\u2019 rockets. Just as Spaceflight Inc. was able to reserve a dedicated SpaceX Falcon 9 launch in 2018, Orbite could help its clients reserve spots with Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX or other spaceflight providers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn one hand, we\u2019ll train our clients, and we can recommend and be their third-party advisers on them purchasing their tickets, to go to one of these providers,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the same time, what we saw at Spaceflight was that a lot of these operators want to focus on launching full rockets instead of herding cats.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that scenario, Orbite could take care of the cat-herding.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Artwork shows an interior view of Orbite\u2019s Astronaut Training and Spaceflight Gateway Campus, with mockups of a SpaceX Dragon capsule and a Blue Origin New Shepard capsule on display. (Orbite Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Andrews said managing the preparations for space trips is likely to become more complicated once SpaceX\u2019s Starship super-rocket enters the picture. \u201cWorking with a dozen high-net-worth individuals to put together a Starship mission is a tremendous undertaking,\u201d he said. \u201cWe think Orbite is ideally suited to do that, because we\u2019re focused on customers and have the infrastructure to support them. And it saves the industry from duplicating that infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orbite\u2019s customer base may not be limited to spacefliers. \u201cReally, it\u2019s the adventure of a lifetime for the family, and so that\u2019s how we think about it,\u201d Andrews said. \u201cIt could be that one individual flies, but the family trains, and their friends come to experience that.\u201d<\/p>\n

What kind of niche will Orbite be able to carve out in a space transportation industry that\u2019s still in its infancy? Andrews acknowledged that the venture has faced its share of challenges. But that\u2019s the way it typically goes in the space business \u2014 and for that matter, in the startup world as well. <\/p>\n

\u201cAny entrepreneur starts out on a new adventure, especially when you\u2019re building a new industry from the ground up,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf I go back to the early days of Spaceflight, in 2009 and 2010, we had our missionary robes on, walking around the industry for two to three years before we signed our first contract. And it was years later before we launched our first flight,\u201d Andrews recalled. \u201cSo, this is not uncommon when you\u2019re trying to do something that\u2019s never been done before. On one hand, do I wish we were farther forward? Yes. On the other hand, we\u2019ve done a tremendous amount.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Participants in an astronaut orientation session float during a zero-G flight in France in 2021. (Orbite Photo) After getting its start in Seattle and testing its business model in France and Florida, a space travel venture called Orbite is ready to start signing up customers for private-sector astronaut training programs. And although it\u2019ll be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1668,291,4530,4326,493,2340,4464,4465],"class_list":["post-17247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astronauts","tag-commercial-space","tag-jason-andrews","tag-orbite","tag-space-tourism","tag-spaceflight","tag-training","tag-travel"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}